Skylights or sky windows have often been used to illuminate the interior of buildings. Most skylights are passive devices that act as windows relying completely on natural daylight for illuminations. Some skylights have combined the benefits of natural lighting with artificial lighting. One such skylight is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,528,471 entitled “Skylight And Lamp Combination” issuing to Green on Jun. 18, 1996. Therein disclosed is a skylight and lamp combination for providing natural and artificial light to a room. A plurality of lamp fixtures is disposed within the housing of the skylight for emitting artificial light to the bottom end of the housing. The lamp fixtures are disclosed as being fluorescent light fixtures or incandescent light fixtures of conventional design. A retractable shade is also disclosed. For daytime darkening, the shade or blind is rolled over and the fluorescent lights are used alone or not depending on the shading needed during the day.
While most skylights incorporating lamps or artificial lighting extend the practicality of skylights and their use for providing light when natural light is not available, they are often difficult to retrofit and require external power to energize the lamps or artificial lighting. The need to connect to an external power source makes the installation more complicated and may limit design flexibility. Additionally, the combination of artificial lighting and skylights is generally efficient and does reduce energy consumption, but still requires an external power source.
Therefore, there is a need for a more efficient, self-contained natural and artificial lighting system that is easily installed, is energy efficient, and substantially reduces the need for external energy sources or power connections.